Hunger Striker Stands Firm on Trees

For 50 days, she is said to have survived on water and a bit of broth, spending daylight hours in quiet protest under the boughs of a towering old redwood beside the state Capitol.

Susan Moloney has waged her hunger strike on the lawn of the Capitol to make a point about trees with the man who presides inside. When he first ran for office four years ago, Gov. Gray Davis vowed to save California’s old-growth forests. He hasn’t, as Moloney sees it, and she wants him to live up to that long-ago campaign promise.

“It is indeed sad we have to do these kinds of things to get attention,” Moloney said Monday.

The governor refuses to be budged by this one-woman protest, saying through a spokesman that those remarks from the 1998 election stump have been misconstrued by Moloney and the media and that he has in fact saved plenty of the old trees.

“Public policy is not made by refusing to eat,” said Steve Maviglio, Davis’ spokesman. “This sort of thing is a publicity stunt, not an effort for meaningful change.”

So they remained at loggerheads Monday on the cusp of a holiday known for feasting, not fasting: Moloney, the hunger striker, who thinks every tree older than the state’s founding in 1850 should be spared the chain saw; and Davis, the governor, whose foes say only big contributions get big results.

Moloney was joined Monday by Julia Butterfly Hill, the tree sitter whose epic two-year vigil in the branches of a Humboldt County redwood ended in 1999 after loggers agreed to sell the tree to a nonprofit organization.

During a news conference Monday on the Capitol steps, Hill vowed to spend Thanksgiving week -- and perhaps longer -- fasting with Moloney to prod the governor toward adopting blanket protection for California’s oldest trees.

“We’re tired of the lies and tired of the spin,” Hill said. “Now is the time for Gov. Davis to stop running from his promise.”

Over the past 50 days, Moloney said, she has seen her weight drop more than 20 pounds. At 5-foot-5, she is now a gaunt 107 pounds. Bones in her hips and shoulders that never showed before now jut out. A native of New York, Moloney was a computer programmer until she moved to Humboldt County in the mid-90s and became an environmental activist. She’s now executive director of the Campaign for Old Growth, a grass-roots group trying to put a measure on the state ballot to ban axing all trees more than 152 years old. The group tried to get an initiative on the November ballot, but failed to gather enough signatures.

The ballot measure is only the most recent cause in the war to save the North Coast redwoods, which has raged virtually unabated for more than a decade. With plenty of tree-sitting activists already in place on private timber tracts, Moloney began the hunger strike Oct. 7 as a new approach to get Davis’ attention.

Each workday, she spends several hours in a canvas-backed camping chair. “It’s not a Lazee Boy,” she quipped, “but it’s not bad.” Overhead is the huge redwood tree dedicated to Gil Murray, a timber industry lobbyist who was the last victim of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.

Early on, a few passersby gave Moloney a razzing. One even asked, “Want a hamburger?” Moloney, in fact, is a strict vegetarian. But mostly, Moloney said, she has heard only kind words of support and sympathy. Some people come up with tears in their eyes, she said, asking that she not hurt herself.

Though one Capitol worker claims to have seen Moloney sneaking a few Cheerios, the activist says she subsisted for the first 40 days only on water and herbal tea. After visiting a registered nurse, Moloney added vegetable broth and freshly juiced carrot and apple to her diet.

The worst effect, she said, has been a growing inability to withstand the foggy fall cold of Sacramento. She tries to outsmart it with layers of clothing. But she can last only about three hours outside now, forced to retreat to a friend’s apartment for warmth. On weekends, she usually gets a ride home to Garberville to be with her family, where she said she continues to fast.

Some friends are worried she may be taking this cause too far.

“I’ve been begging her to quit,” said Kent Stromsmoe, a Campaign for Old Growth activist. “I’m concerned the fast will affect her judgment. That she won’t be reasonable about knowing when she should stop.”

Moloney, who has started a Web site (www.fastforoldgrowth.org) to chart her effort, said she has no illusions about carrying on too long, no desire to compromise her long-term health. She said her mental acuity remains intact, and indeed during talks she seems sharp.

“I can feel it taking its toll in several ways,” she said. “But I also feel very strong about carrying this through.”

On March 14, 1998, Davis was quoted by the Associated Press declaring to the state Planning and Conservation League in Sacramento that if elected he would ensure “all old-growth trees are spared from the lumberjack’s ax.” “His promise is unequivocal,” Moloney said. “He’s made excuse after excuse about it. Now we want him to make some positive movement toward saving old growth. That’s what it’s going to take.”

She suggests that the governor agree to endorse her group’s proposal to save heritage trees or declare an emergency moratorium on old-growth harvests. Though the Davis administration played a key role in forging the 1999 public purchase of the revered Headwaters grove in Humboldt County, Moloney said about 7 million old trees remain vulnerable throughout the state.

Maviglio, the governor’s spokesman, said Davis in fact has a better record of saving ancient trees than any of his predecessors.

Aside from helping forge the Headwaters deal, which spared 7,400 acres of redwood and 1,500 of ancient trees, the Davis administration has altered logging rules to require an environmental review before old-growth trees are cut, Maviglio said. Virtually all of California’s ecologically significant old-growth redwood forest is now protected in state or federal parks. During Davis’ watch, the state has purchased more than 30,000 acres of second- and third-generation forest in Del Norte and Mendocino counties.

“I think we need to judge the governor on what he’s done,” Maviglio said. “There are activists who won’t be satisfied unless no trees are cut down. The governor has had to weigh such beliefs against the thousands of jobs on the North Coast that depend on the timber industry.”

A week ago, Davis sent his forestry chief, Andrea Tuttle, out to talk with Moloney, Maviglio said. There was no compromising, no agreement by either camp. Davis is “absolutely” concerned about Moloney’s welfare, Maviglio said, but is convinced she has an extremist viewpoint.

Moloney said she figures the governor needs to hear from people like her. Though not a big campaign donor, she said, she represents thousands of Californians who want to save the trees -- and a lot more who expect campaign-trail vows to be kept.

“All I know is he made an important promise when he wanted our vote,” Moloney said. “Now he seems far more interested in the desires of the timber industry than the wishes of the majority of people in the state.”